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silveradept[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]
People who struggle with imposter syndrome believe that they are undeserving of their achievements and the high esteem in which they are, in fact, generally held. They feel that they aren’t as competent or intelligent as others might think—and that soon enough, people will discover the truth about them.
This gets tangled with the previous post, as well. If you have an undiagnosed medical condition or other such element that regularly flares up and crates problems for you in your interactions with others, or that complicates your work space and workflow, you can sometimes also feel like you at your worst is you at your most authentic and genuine, and therefore everything else that is competence, achievement, or functioning in the outside world, success in your friendly and intimate relationships, or otherwise the case of managing to be a fucking adult is artifice, luck, or other things that cannot possibly be attributed to yourself, because you are a fucking mess and nobody would ever let you out to adult if they understood who you really are.
Compounding the issue further, my profession is not known for appreciating and supporting each other's work on large scales. There are the Mover and Shaker designations, the various scholarships and awards from local, state, and national organizations, but those things are out of reach. Most practicing librarians will never be anywhere near a cusp of emerging technology, or put in charge of a program that will garner national acclaim, or get targeted by a group or a set of politicians in specifics such that the national eye comes to rest on you with sympathy and support from others across the country or the world. They do their jobs efficiently and well, and in doing so, fade into becoming part of the fabric, people for whom high quality is expected, rather than appreciated. Yes, appreciating everything can be overwhelming, because so much of our lives running smoothly are dependent on a significant swath of people performing their work to a high standard, often for people they will never see or hear from unless there are problems. But librarians mostly see the news stories, the award recipients, the Movers and Shakers and think, either genuinely or cynically, that's what it must take for someone to be a star librarian, and all the rest of us are middling along, doing out jobs and hoping that nobody confronts us about how we're all frauds because we can't do the things that Some Other Library has managed to achieve.
I try to give thanks where I can for the excellence of others, because I know how rarely it happens, and to pass along those rare nuggets of good customer feedback as well, if I happen to hear them, for the same reason. I hope it well foster a culture of appreciation at my workplace, but it can also trigger some imposter feelings when I don't receive such things but rarely in return, if at all. I don't know what other people think about me, other than what they say, and if what they say is mostly silence, is that "systems nominal" or a silent indictment of my own poor performance? An i actually as smart, capable, and clever as i need to be for this job? If I'm not, at least for now, i seem to be doing a good job of keeping the plates spinning, but it'll only be a matter of time before they all come crashing down.
This feeling of being an imposter extends to other parts of my life as well, especially when it comes to hobbies and interpersonal relationships. Doing the Adventures in Home Automation reports is about documenting what goes on in configuration and the philosophical decisions behind what gets done in the automation and technology spheres in the house. In case of catastrophe, so that things can be rebuilt, practically. Beyond that practical purpose, though, they exist as logs and evidence that I can do things that I believe I'm not capable of. Which I'm not, actually. I do not know how to bring shell scripts into existence using the power of my mind and my keyboard. I do not have extensive knowledge of the templating language, or the markup language, or the underlying code that makes all of it run. I'm working with the interfaces and the documentation and the things that the people who do have those skills have put in front of me to try and make all of this easier, more accessible, and usable by people who do not have that kind of knowledge. Through their efforts, I can learn some things. When they have documents, I can try things to nudge and push and maybe see if I can modify something to get a desired effect. Or maybe if there's decent code comments, I can study the code and tweak that to my effect. My solutions do not feel elegant, but for the most part, they work. And if I run into a case where they need to work and didn't, I try to fix, refactor, or otherwise change what's going on until it does work and can accommodate the new thing.
The comments in that series routinely say that all of those things that I have described above are real computer-toucher things, real people-who-code-stuff things, and that artificially limiting myself to "can create elegant code ex nihilo" as the sole effective sign of not being an imposter at code is a more stringent standard than even people who touch code and computers professionally hold themselves to.
If I am claiming that I don't really have the skills for cooking, because I follow recipes instead of being able to look at a basket of ingredients and create something delicious, I get pushback that professionals who cook follow recipes. And also, I had it pointed out to me, and then insisted upon by countering my evasions with the reality on the ground, that I did the primary cooking duties for the harvest feast last week. All of which meant basically following recipes, package directions, and asking for and following the directions from the more experienced cook. The feast turned out deliciously, therefore I did a good job with it, regardless of what my weasels were telling me about how I hadn't really done all that much to make the feast appear. Or how much I was concerned that everything would turn out horribly and I would be exposed as someone who really couldn't cook. (Pay no attention to all the successful times I have followed package directions and recipes and made things on camera for small ones to follow along in their own homes with. That's the imposter's work.)
The Twice Exceptional child, who often excelled in structured environments with clear and measurable goals, can find themselves floundering hard outside of those environments. There aren't grades in your work evaluations. (Or if there are, it's usually a very small set of gradations, like "Doesn't Meet Expectations," "Meets Expectations," "Exceeds Expectations.") While there is supposedly a rubric for those evaluations, the scoring is mostly dependent on your supervisor, maybe with input from your coworkers and/or reports, so the scoring will never be fully objective. (It wasn't in the structured environments, but it was more objective, or the criteria were usually more effectively published and disseminated.) Social situations like friendship or romance or sex don't have rubrics, no matter what those manosphere types who have a "system" that they believe allows you to treat actual people like dating sim characters with manipulable relationship values say. It's all squishy and subjective and other people and their motivations are obscured.
In my specific case, I've also internalized an underlying message of what many of the people trying to fight for structural change are trying to get across: many people of privilege don't recognize the harm they do when they act on the assumption that things are the same for the privileged than as for the ones without. (Some other set of people of privilege do understand the harm they're doing when they act, and then they do so with malice, and usually racism, in their hearts.) So if someone thinks of me as a genuinely (or even generally) good person with ethics or morals and behaviors that reflect this, I'm usually thinking about whether or not that's genuinely the case, or whether it's that I've just not shown my ass in public yet and given you an idea of what my true character is. (And there has been at least one time where I did act in ignorance and tried to gain greater understanding and instead dug myself in further.) Even though I am regularly reading about the actions of people doing things that I would not consider doing, and that I recognize as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. When I get in this mood or mode, someone usually has an anecdote to tell so that I will recognize that the actual floor, or the actual bar that people are still managing to work their way underneath, is still much farther down than where I think the absolute bottom is. It doesn't always work (the weasel persists), but it is trying to point out that I am probably better than my worst fears of what I could be capable of.
Having this imposter's feeling is a lot of shouting at people "Don't you get it? Past performance is no indication of future returns!" and having them look at you and say "Sure, but your past performance gives us no reason to doubt your future returns." Or "Your past performance is a lot better than you think it is." Or even "I like you anyway." That last one is pretty frustrating to someone who is trying to convince you they're an imposter, or trying to convince themselves they're an imposter, because there's nothing there to argue on the merits. The only argument that's there is to tell someone else their opinion about you is wrong. Which, when you're getting bitten hard by the brainweasels sieging you, yes, that's something you can try to argue. (And fail at.) Some exceedingly strange people even like you with all of the insecurities, worries, and certainty that you are going to expose yourself as the imposter any time now and, because of that, fuck things up so severely that the only option that person will have is to terminate any contact at all with you.
If Peter's right, though, then eventually we all get promoted to the level of our incompetence, and I suspect at that point, it's no longer a question of whether we think we're bad at the things that we're doing, it's that we end up being bad at it, and probably suffering from other things like burnout from trying to do a job that is actually beyond our competence and that makes us and the people around us cranky because we're not good at it. At that point, we're not fooling ourselves about what our real skills and others' opinions of us are.
People who struggle with imposter syndrome believe that they are undeserving of their achievements and the high esteem in which they are, in fact, generally held. They feel that they aren’t as competent or intelligent as others might think—and that soon enough, people will discover the truth about them.
This gets tangled with the previous post, as well. If you have an undiagnosed medical condition or other such element that regularly flares up and crates problems for you in your interactions with others, or that complicates your work space and workflow, you can sometimes also feel like you at your worst is you at your most authentic and genuine, and therefore everything else that is competence, achievement, or functioning in the outside world, success in your friendly and intimate relationships, or otherwise the case of managing to be a fucking adult is artifice, luck, or other things that cannot possibly be attributed to yourself, because you are a fucking mess and nobody would ever let you out to adult if they understood who you really are.
Compounding the issue further, my profession is not known for appreciating and supporting each other's work on large scales. There are the Mover and Shaker designations, the various scholarships and awards from local, state, and national organizations, but those things are out of reach. Most practicing librarians will never be anywhere near a cusp of emerging technology, or put in charge of a program that will garner national acclaim, or get targeted by a group or a set of politicians in specifics such that the national eye comes to rest on you with sympathy and support from others across the country or the world. They do their jobs efficiently and well, and in doing so, fade into becoming part of the fabric, people for whom high quality is expected, rather than appreciated. Yes, appreciating everything can be overwhelming, because so much of our lives running smoothly are dependent on a significant swath of people performing their work to a high standard, often for people they will never see or hear from unless there are problems. But librarians mostly see the news stories, the award recipients, the Movers and Shakers and think, either genuinely or cynically, that's what it must take for someone to be a star librarian, and all the rest of us are middling along, doing out jobs and hoping that nobody confronts us about how we're all frauds because we can't do the things that Some Other Library has managed to achieve.
I try to give thanks where I can for the excellence of others, because I know how rarely it happens, and to pass along those rare nuggets of good customer feedback as well, if I happen to hear them, for the same reason. I hope it well foster a culture of appreciation at my workplace, but it can also trigger some imposter feelings when I don't receive such things but rarely in return, if at all. I don't know what other people think about me, other than what they say, and if what they say is mostly silence, is that "systems nominal" or a silent indictment of my own poor performance? An i actually as smart, capable, and clever as i need to be for this job? If I'm not, at least for now, i seem to be doing a good job of keeping the plates spinning, but it'll only be a matter of time before they all come crashing down.
This feeling of being an imposter extends to other parts of my life as well, especially when it comes to hobbies and interpersonal relationships. Doing the Adventures in Home Automation reports is about documenting what goes on in configuration and the philosophical decisions behind what gets done in the automation and technology spheres in the house. In case of catastrophe, so that things can be rebuilt, practically. Beyond that practical purpose, though, they exist as logs and evidence that I can do things that I believe I'm not capable of. Which I'm not, actually. I do not know how to bring shell scripts into existence using the power of my mind and my keyboard. I do not have extensive knowledge of the templating language, or the markup language, or the underlying code that makes all of it run. I'm working with the interfaces and the documentation and the things that the people who do have those skills have put in front of me to try and make all of this easier, more accessible, and usable by people who do not have that kind of knowledge. Through their efforts, I can learn some things. When they have documents, I can try things to nudge and push and maybe see if I can modify something to get a desired effect. Or maybe if there's decent code comments, I can study the code and tweak that to my effect. My solutions do not feel elegant, but for the most part, they work. And if I run into a case where they need to work and didn't, I try to fix, refactor, or otherwise change what's going on until it does work and can accommodate the new thing.
The comments in that series routinely say that all of those things that I have described above are real computer-toucher things, real people-who-code-stuff things, and that artificially limiting myself to "can create elegant code ex nihilo" as the sole effective sign of not being an imposter at code is a more stringent standard than even people who touch code and computers professionally hold themselves to.
If I am claiming that I don't really have the skills for cooking, because I follow recipes instead of being able to look at a basket of ingredients and create something delicious, I get pushback that professionals who cook follow recipes. And also, I had it pointed out to me, and then insisted upon by countering my evasions with the reality on the ground, that I did the primary cooking duties for the harvest feast last week. All of which meant basically following recipes, package directions, and asking for and following the directions from the more experienced cook. The feast turned out deliciously, therefore I did a good job with it, regardless of what my weasels were telling me about how I hadn't really done all that much to make the feast appear. Or how much I was concerned that everything would turn out horribly and I would be exposed as someone who really couldn't cook. (Pay no attention to all the successful times I have followed package directions and recipes and made things on camera for small ones to follow along in their own homes with. That's the imposter's work.)
The Twice Exceptional child, who often excelled in structured environments with clear and measurable goals, can find themselves floundering hard outside of those environments. There aren't grades in your work evaluations. (Or if there are, it's usually a very small set of gradations, like "Doesn't Meet Expectations," "Meets Expectations," "Exceeds Expectations.") While there is supposedly a rubric for those evaluations, the scoring is mostly dependent on your supervisor, maybe with input from your coworkers and/or reports, so the scoring will never be fully objective. (It wasn't in the structured environments, but it was more objective, or the criteria were usually more effectively published and disseminated.) Social situations like friendship or romance or sex don't have rubrics, no matter what those manosphere types who have a "system" that they believe allows you to treat actual people like dating sim characters with manipulable relationship values say. It's all squishy and subjective and other people and their motivations are obscured.
In my specific case, I've also internalized an underlying message of what many of the people trying to fight for structural change are trying to get across: many people of privilege don't recognize the harm they do when they act on the assumption that things are the same for the privileged than as for the ones without. (Some other set of people of privilege do understand the harm they're doing when they act, and then they do so with malice, and usually racism, in their hearts.) So if someone thinks of me as a genuinely (or even generally) good person with ethics or morals and behaviors that reflect this, I'm usually thinking about whether or not that's genuinely the case, or whether it's that I've just not shown my ass in public yet and given you an idea of what my true character is. (And there has been at least one time where I did act in ignorance and tried to gain greater understanding and instead dug myself in further.) Even though I am regularly reading about the actions of people doing things that I would not consider doing, and that I recognize as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. When I get in this mood or mode, someone usually has an anecdote to tell so that I will recognize that the actual floor, or the actual bar that people are still managing to work their way underneath, is still much farther down than where I think the absolute bottom is. It doesn't always work (the weasel persists), but it is trying to point out that I am probably better than my worst fears of what I could be capable of.
Having this imposter's feeling is a lot of shouting at people "Don't you get it? Past performance is no indication of future returns!" and having them look at you and say "Sure, but your past performance gives us no reason to doubt your future returns." Or "Your past performance is a lot better than you think it is." Or even "I like you anyway." That last one is pretty frustrating to someone who is trying to convince you they're an imposter, or trying to convince themselves they're an imposter, because there's nothing there to argue on the merits. The only argument that's there is to tell someone else their opinion about you is wrong. Which, when you're getting bitten hard by the brainweasels sieging you, yes, that's something you can try to argue. (And fail at.) Some exceedingly strange people even like you with all of the insecurities, worries, and certainty that you are going to expose yourself as the imposter any time now and, because of that, fuck things up so severely that the only option that person will have is to terminate any contact at all with you.
If Peter's right, though, then eventually we all get promoted to the level of our incompetence, and I suspect at that point, it's no longer a question of whether we think we're bad at the things that we're doing, it's that we end up being bad at it, and probably suffering from other things like burnout from trying to do a job that is actually beyond our competence and that makes us and the people around us cranky because we're not good at it. At that point, we're not fooling ourselves about what our real skills and others' opinions of us are.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-06 12:40 pm (UTC)Your post made me remember this. A very bad case of imposter syndrome. They were really suffering and it made me feel so bad for them. I learned that at that time they had approached several people I knew in that fandom for betas, seemingly with the sole purpose of getting validation that they sucked and should stop writing. Which was objectively NOT THE CASE.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-08 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 07:12 pm (UTC)While there are many reasons that impostor syndrome is considered an occupational hazard where I work, there have also been countervailing pressures that have helped me. One big one is that promotion has generally been based on "is doing next-level work" - the downside is that it's harder to be promoted and takes longer, but OTOH it resists the Peter Principle. Another is that there's a promotion path for people who don't want to, or shouldn't, be in management roles (Software Engineer -> Senior Software Engineer -> Staff Software Engineer -> Senior Staff Software Engineer).
I think the one that helped me the most was fairly individual, though.
In 2008 I interviewed with two different companies; one was a small specialized tech company based in Cambridge, and the other was a giant generalized tech company based in the Bay Area. While the latter had a local office, it didn't have any roles for me at the time so I took the smaller company's offer because I didn't want to relocate.
Three years later, BigCo bought SmallCo (and significantly grew the local office overnight in the process).
Six weeks after the deal closed, I got email saying "we interviewed you a few years ago and you didn't want to relocate; we have some opportunities in Cambridge that might work for you, would you like to talk?"
I replied "I think at least one of those is the open headcount on my current team, since I work here now that you bought my company."
Having my interview from three years ago be good enough to get a cold call email from a recruiter was a really strong boost of "okay, maybe I do belong here after all".
no subject
Date: 2024-12-07 09:13 pm (UTC)Getting a recruiter calling you about your skills for a job that you turned down several years ago is a nice sign for you.